Since man first began uncapping honeycombs to remove the honey contained therein, the usual method has been to cut the caps off, often assisted by use of a heated knife. This is a messy job at best and since a part of the comb remains connected to the beeswax caps, further processing is required for the beeswax as a useable item.
With the advent of commercial beekeeping, removable frames have been provided in specially constructed hive containers first to aid the bees in building the combs and secondly to allow easy removal of the comb at the appropriate time. Even with this relatively sophisticated method, each frame must be individually handled to remove the honey from the filled honeycomb.
Rotating knifes or blades have been used in an effort to speed up the uncapping process but have met with only limited success at best. Artificial honeycombs have been fabricated and several types of plastic materials have been found suitable for this purpose and acceptable to the bees. Uncapping of plastic honeycombs, however, is difficult with piercing rather than cutting usually being required which reduces the honey extraction rate which is an additional disadvantage.
In all of these prior known systems, uncapping and extraction of the honey were accomplished in two separate operations with intermediate handling being required therebetween.